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Shunryu Suzuki stuffz

in Thank You and OK! excerpt
David Chadwick

Suzuki told me once that I should keep sitting and wait for something wonderful to happen. He didn't mean, I don't think, that I should try to create this "something wonderful" by a meditative technique, but rather that I should practice "just sitting" alertly and continue just walking, just eating and so forth without any intention or striving. Over the course of time, something wonderful would happen of itself, not as a result of my effort. He said that I would definitely have "some experience." He defined it as little as possible but I thought that he meant the type of experience that is sometimes called "beyond experience" and is indescribable and all that. In other words, I didn't know what he meant. So I was very pleased to hear him say that it would definitely happen because I had been all worked up about it back then. But aside from various temporal, lifestyle and therapeutic effects, I couldn't claim that my first few years at Zen had produced anything close to "dropping away of body and mind."

"Don't fight," he said, "That is the key - don't fight." And don't strive to gain what I've already got. The point isn't to bring on spiritual experience but to cultivate the mind that can receive it, realize it - to "widen the stage" as I remember Dick Baker explaining to a Tassajara guest back in '67. And this effort is not at all tied to huffing and puffing or to a forced slow motion, but to just "do what you're doing" (age quod agis - a saying of the Jesuits). Suzuki and Katagiri imparted the empowering teaching that we are fine as is. No need for something extra, just us as we are is all we need to stand in the footsteps of the saints and to sit on the zafu of the masters.

Suzuki didn't stop at "something wonderful." He went on to say that not only would it happen to me, but that it would happen to everyone. I liked that even though it definitely reduced my sense of being special, because it increased my odds dramatically. It would happen to us all. Good. There was a catch though. "You should continue sitting," he said. "If you continue sitting, this wonderful experience can continue with you. It can be yours forever. But if you have no practice, it will be passing - like a psychedelic experience."

Re: Shunryu Suzuki stuffz

Originally Posted by undeceivable

Thanks Will. Great video. Made me laugh to see him laugh so much.

I picked Suzuki's book waaaay back in 1992 or so. All this time, he was just words in the page. The photo in the back gave me an idea of how he looked like, but photos sometimes just give you so much. Recently, I found that video and was happy to find that he seemed so full of life. That smile. That laugh. Made again go back and pick up the book, but now....hearing his voice and remembering that laugh.